Ashwin Padaki

apadaki (at) seas.upenn.edu

I am a first-year Computer Science PhD student at the University of Pennsylvania advised by Sanjeev Khanna and Erik Waingarten. I'm interested in theoretical computer science, and I'm particularly fascinated by algorithms which scale almost linearly or even sublinearly with the size of their input, whether that input is a large graph or a massive, high-dimensional dataset. I also enjoy thinking about problems which blur the line between combinatorial and geometric reasoning. Definitely reach out if we have any common interests, or if you just want to talk!

Before coming to Penn, I did my undergrad at Columbia University, where I studied Math and Computer Science. I've been lucky to have amazing mentors in Josh Alman, Karthik C. S., and Rocco Servedio.

I am fortunate to be supported by an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship.

Research

Inapproximability of Maximum Diameter Clustering for Few Clusters
with Karthik C. S., Henry Fleischmann, Kyrylo Karlov, Styopa Zharkov
arXiv | SODA 2025
Smaller Low-Depth Circuits for Kronecker Powers
with Josh Alman, Yunfeng Guan
arXiv | SODA 2023

Teaching

I was a teaching assistant for the following classes at Columbia:

Cryptography
(COMS 4261, Fall 2023)
Computational Complexity
(COMS 4236, Spring 2023)
Real Analysis I
(MATH 4041, Fall 2022)

In Fall 2023, I co-mentored a lecture series in Boolean function analysis as part of the Columbia Undergraduate Learning Seminar in Theoretical Computer Science.

Other

Years ago, I interned as a quantitative trader at Optiver, an options market making firm in Chicago.
Outside of research, I love playing soccer and tennis, going on long walks and hikes, making music, and experimenting with wordplay.